


Sending You A Sunset

by SomewhereApart



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 06:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16948464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomewhereApart/pseuds/SomewhereApart
Summary: While in NYC, Robin takes pictures of everything that makes him think of Regina.





	Sending You A Sunset

He’s let her go as best he can, has tried to make things work with Marian. And they are working, as best they can be, but he still thinks of her - of Regina - now and then. More often than he’d like. Every day. He could find her again, could speak to her if he wanted - all it would take was one call to Emma, or David, even Will could track down her number for him. But he’s made a choice, and he will honor it as long as he can bear.

Still, he thinks of her. He sees an apple tart at the bakery Roland likes that brings her to mind, a dress in a shop window he cannot help imagining would look stunning on her, a tree with curling gnarled branches in the middle of Central Park, one he thinks she’d like. He thinks of her when he sees beautiful things - the buds sprouting on the trees, a shock of tulips freshly planted on the sidewalk, the sky going pink and purple in the morning as the sun begins its climb toward the spires of this city he’s come to love and loathe in equal measure.

It’s not home, and yet it is, and he wonders what she would think of it, what she would like, or not like.

So he takes pictures. All of those beautiful things, and that apple tart, and a foamy cappuccino that reminds him of the taste of her lips that morning he’d kissed her in the hall at Granny’s. He records each moment, each thought of her in a snapshot on his phone, telling himself it’s part of how he grieves the loss of her (ignoring the part that insists the photos are for later, for when they’re together again, for her).

The last photo he takes in New York City is of a sunset over New Jersey, taken from the edges of Riverside Park. The sky streaked with purples and reds, strips of cloud still bright and shining gold at the bottoms. It’s breathtaking, reminds him of the rich colors of her dresses that year in the Forest. He captures it (for him, for her) and then stands staring until it burns into his retinas, until the sky goes dark, starless, empty.

The very next day, Regina returns to him, against all odds, blows down this house of cards he’s been living in, and brings him home with her.

It’s not until long days later, chaotic days full of upheaval and stress, that he holds his every thought of her in his palm and flips through them one by one. She curls against his side, warm and soft and smelling of cinnamon and vanilla as she always has, her hair a dark drape against his shoulder and grown so long now. He tells her of life in New York, of missing her in moments, of carrying her with him always, in secret, even then. Even when he’d betrayed her by trying to love another (she insists she doesn’t see it that way, and he tries not to either, but there are moments he can’t help but feel the stunned guilt of not knowing how wrong everything was).

He ends on that sunset, that shock of beautiful color. She strokes her fingertip along the screen and murmurs, “Send this one to me,” and then, “Delete the rest. We’ll start over, take new ones together.”

And so he does, and they do.

* * *

 

 _I’m sending you a sunset_  
I’m thinking of you   
This big old sky full of purples and reds   
Is making me blue   
I’m sending you a sunset   
Wishing you were here with me   
When I close my eyes I can almost see your silhouette   
I want your heart to know that my heart will never forget   
So I’m sending you a sunset

_\--Kristian Bush_


End file.
